The Curse of Monkey Island

aka: A Maldição da Ilha dos Macacos, CMI, La Maldicion de Monkey Island, La Malédiction De l'Ile aux Singes, La maledizione di Monkey Island, MI3, Monkey Island 3, Prokljatje Ostrova Obez'jan
Moby ID: 547
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Description official descriptions

Having barely escaped LeChuck's dreadful amusement park, Guybrush Threepwood finds himself stuck in the middle of the sea, with nothing in his boat but a sausage and a diary. Musing over the events that have led him into this predicament, Guybrush suddenly discovers a ship navigated by none other than his archenemy. Once again, Guybrush saves his beloved Elaine from the claws of his undead rival. In the midst of the treasure that belonged to the defeated foe Guybrush finds a ring. Overwhelmed by his love to Elaine, he proposes marriage to her and gives her the ring. What he doesn't know is that the ring is cursed; before he is able to realize what is happening, Elaine is turned into a gold statue. Will Guybrush be able to lift the curse and to save his one and only love?

This third installment of the Monkey Island is, like its predecessors, a humorous puzzle-solving adventure game. The game features cartoon-style SVGA graphics and (for the first time in the series) voice-overs for all the conversations. The interface no longer involves a list of verbs that occupies a part of the screen; instead, it follows the same principle as in Full Throttle: the player chooses first the object to interact with, then the action from a menu that appears. Like the second game, The Curse of Monkey Island has two difficulty levels.

Spellings

  • Проклятье Острова Обезьян - Russian spelling (unofficial)
  • 猴岛小英雄3:猴岛的诅咒 - Simplified Chinese spelling
  • 猴島小英雄III:猴島的詛咒 - Traditional Chinese spelling
  • 원숭이섬의 저주 - Korean spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

318 People (272 developers, 46 thanks) · View all

Project Leads
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Lead Background Artist
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Lead Animator
2D Animation
3D Animation
2D Cleanup and In-Betweens
Art and Animation Director
Lead Render Artist
Render Artists
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[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 90% (based on 42 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.1 out of 5 (based on 322 ratings with 18 reviews)

An Excellent Sequel to two excellent games...

The Good
First off, the game is funny as hell. A lot of the humor is subtle (like the "Myst" references when Guybrush first meets the Flying Welshman), but great. I especially enjoyed the scene that introduces Stan (who appears for the third time in the series). I laughed my ass off at that one. The graphics are pretty good too, the cartoony feel really gives the game the personality it needs. The first to were good, but the pixellated EGA/VGA graphics didn't quite fit the theme of the series quite as well as Curse's graphics do. The voice acting is top notch; it allows for some good gags that wouldn't work with just text. As far as music goes, I had no complaints. A lot of familiar theme songs were in the game, along with some new ones. Finally, the story wasn't too bad either. Towards the end, it finally explained why MI2's ending was so bizarre.

To sum things up: A great game! A+!

The Bad
The ending was way too easy and short. I didn't even have to peek at the hints for the final sequence. Also, some of the puzzles were way too obscure and senseless (at least for me), such as the tiki-mask puzzle on Blood Island. The game itself was pretty short too, although I only played the "basic" difficulty level. One more thing: the game doesn't make much sense (especially the ending) if you haven't played the first two games. Oh well, those are just minor issues.

The Bottom Line
A hilarious addition to Lucasart's universe of swashbuckling pirates and three-headed monkeys. Two Thumbs Up!

Windows · by Drew Dorton (71) · 2000

The Monkeys are Listening

The Good
The Curse of Monkey Island (CMI) seeks to appeal to younger gamers, who were not familiar with the first two games. It also seeks to maintain its established fanbase, who had been patiently waiting years for the next entry in the Monkey Island franchise.

CMI looks and sounds quite impressive for a late-1990s, point 'n click adventure game. I think that the redesign of the characters (generally) works nicely, and the voice talents are some of the best seen in an adventure game.

I suspect that someone thought about developing the Monkey Island franchise into an animated film.

The story picks up where the second game ended and by the end of the 2-CD game, Guybrush will interact with plenty of old and new friends.

The gameplay mechanics are responsive and easy to learn. It is nice to see the point and click gaming given an update. If you played Full Throttle, another Lucas Arts Adventure game, then you will easily pick up the controls for CMI.

The Curse of Monkey Island offers high seas, sword fighting, cursed diamond rings, vegetarian cannibals, and, mostly the sort of humor seen in the first two games.

The Bad
The Curse of Monkey Island doesn't have much of the original Monkey Island designers involved. The creator of the series had left the company, and only one or two people involved with the previous games returns for this third entry in the Monkey Island series. It shows.

While I like the new character design, making the game look more like a cartoon does take away much of the "piratey" atmosphere seen in the first two games.

With few exceptions, the game never really captures an appropriate mood. The animation looks pretty, often stunning, but it doesn't really accomplish much in the atmosphere department.

Yes, the game is quite funny. The character design, game backgrounds and the like certainly help "sell" the on-screen comedy. However, when the game attempts to set a different tone/atmosphere, it is less successful.

The second criticism of the game is how unpolished the Carnival is. It is near the end of the game and fans were expecting to be able to actually explore the Carnival.

Instead, you get a few quick puzzles and lots of exposition. Apparently, the game was reaching its deadline, and stuff had to be cut (or left on the drawing room floor) near the end.

It's unfortunate because the rushed nature of the game is felt with the Carnival and the game's short ending.



The Bottom Line
The Curse of Monkey Island seeks to put the Monkey Island franchise into a Saturday Morning Cartoon. LucasArts hoped that the third entry in the Guybrush Threepwood Adventure game series would expand the fan base, while also keeping established fans satisfied. The Curse of Monkey Island is pretty looking, fun and funny. You cannot overlook the game's faults, but you also cannot resist the Curse of Monkey Island.

Windows · by Shamal Jifan (20) · 2017

The king of adventure games.

The Good
It really is amazing. Every time a Monkey Island game comes out it manages to top the last title. The story is loads of fun with the same humour and comic charm of the previous MI titles (whoever came up with the hilarious pirate song in the middle of the game deserves an award). Graphically this is about as good as hand drawn 2d art gets. The backgrounds are all lavish cartoon art and the characters are brilliantly designed. Several favorites from the first MI games make a return along with some great new characters like Murray the evil talking skull and the hilarious Captain Blonebeard who runs the local chicken shop. Voice acting is flawless. Everyone has so much character and brings a brilliance to the game that text sentences just can't capture. Music is equally brilliant and never sets a foot wrong. The puzzle difficulty also makes a return so that novices aren't left in the cold.

The Bad
Nothing! well maybe that boat section in the middle of the game. The arcade aspect is a little dull but it can be turned off if you desire.

The Bottom Line
I can barely believe it but I think this is the greatest Monkey Island adventure of them all. Any adventure fan simply must get it with the exception of purists who think that if a game wasn't made when speech was only text then it should be ignored.

Windows · by Sycada (177) · 2002

[ View all 18 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Like a good wine... The Fabulous King (1332) Jul 9, 2013

Trivia

1001 Video Games

The Curse of Monkey Island appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Cancelled movie

There used to be a department somewhere within Industrial Light and Magic, that was tasked with writing screenplays for animated films based on Lucasfilm's intellectual property from other media. One such screenplay was a Monkey Island movie, entitled The Curse of Monkey Island, likely loosely based on the game of the same name. In the big reorganization of Lucasfilm that occurred a couple of years ago the department was killed and the movie (still in pre-production) with it.

Cut content

  • A love song called "Plank of Love" was planned to be in the game but was never recorded. A stanza from the song, written by Chuck Jordan:

Elaine: "Oh, how I love you Guybrush."

Elaine: "Not even your corny jokes'll..."

Elaine: "Make me wish that I was not your bride..."

Elaine: "When you carry me 'cross your fo'c'sle!" * In a PC Gamer sneak preview of the game, the designers admitted that Gary Coleman's character, Kenny Falmouth, was supposed to answer "What-chu talkin' about, Guybrush?" to a certain question, but they decided to remove the line since they didn't want to risk offending the former star of Diff'rent Strokes.

Development

LucasArts initially designed longer end scenes for the game but due to budget and time restrains were forced to drop those plans.

Development tools

The Curse of Monkey Island used 3 engines: SCUMM (the last LucasArts game to use it), INSANE and iMUSE.

Fingers

You can notice how all the characters in the game have only four fingers on each of their hands. Hard to notice when you're too busy finishing the story, but you can check the end credits. You'll be able to see that quite clear.

Gags

  • When Van Helgen is doing his guitar riff, Guybrush will pull out a lighter if you don't move him for about a minute.
  • On the in-game menu there's a button which appears as disabled and it says "Enable 3D acceleration", but when you get over it with a mouse, it says "No, really, there's no 3D acceleration in this game."

German version

The German version of the game changed the character Rottingham into "Röchelieu" (an obvious pun referring to the cardinal Richelieu, the French politician of the 17th century), and he talks with French accent. Another slight change concerned Palido Domingo, which is a parody of the famous singer Placido Domingo. In the German version it was changed into "Blasido". Why is it funny and why did they change it? Because "blas" means "pale" in German! This way, the joke is even funnier, since the name "Blasido" is more similar to "Placido" than "Palido". Other changes: the character Minestrone is called "Meistersuppe", which is "master soup", and Haggis talks with a broad Frisian accent instead of the original Scotch.

A sequence missing in the European versions of the game is the shanty Guybrush's crew sings in chapter three: A Pirate I was meant to be. For reasons not yet known, the song was cut from non-English versions of the game: in an interview from 2021 designer Larry Ahern says he was not even aware of the song being cut and does not remember ever being asked about it, so he assumes it was probably a decision made by the localization team alone.

Macintosh

Although no Mac version of the game was released, it is possible to play on Mac OS X using ScummVM and the game files from the PC CDs.

Murray

Murray, the demonic skeleton, was only planned to be near LeChuck's ship in the original script. But thanks to loads of positive feedback on the Curse of Monkey Island demo and some initiative of the programmers, the character was added to four other locations in the game in the last few months of development. Murray even has to be used as an inventory item to solve a puzzle at one point.

References

  • In The Curse of Monkey Island there's a place where you can enter the 'forest' screen from original The Secret of Monkey Island. You can only see your new Guybrush head, lurking like from some hole in a tree-stump. From another place, the dying scene under water can be visited. More information about both easter eggs can be found in the tips & tricks section.
  • When you enter the dialogue with LeChuck in part V of the game, Guybrush threatens LeChuck that should he kill Guybrush, there will be no more sequels and LeChuck's name will be forgotten, just like Bobbin Threadbare's. Bobbin Threadbare, of course, is the name of the main character in Loom, and thanks to the low sales of the game, there never was a sequel.
  • The dead guy at Blondebeard's restaurant is none other than Manny Calavera - the main character from Grim Fandango.

References to the game

The Curse of Monkey Island was parodied in an episode of "Die Redaktion" (The Editorial Team), a monthly comedy video produced by the German gaming magazine GameStar. It was published on the DVD of issue 02/2007.

Ron Gilbert

Ron Gilbert, designer of the original two games of the series, said that the game was done well considering the tough job they had, but his biggest complaint was that Elaine fell in love with Guybrush. Gilbert says that Elaine thinks of Guybrush as more of a brother, and she would never do something like that.

Time

  • The church clock tower on Plunder Island always shows exact time in reality, Guybrush will tell you exactly what time is it.
  • Ask Palido Domingo about how long he's been staying at the beach. The answer it will depend on the date set on your computer clock.

Translation

Puerto Pollo, one of the main areas in the game, means Port Chicken in Spanish.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • March 1998 (Issue #164) – Adventure Game of the Year
  • PC Player (Germany)
    • Issue 01/1999 - Best Adventure in 1998

Information also contributed by Adam Schoales, Daniel Albu, Emepol; Gothicgene, James1, Jason Harang, Little Yoda; Marek, MAT, MDMaster, Scott Monster, Tom Murphy, Unicorn Lynx, Zack Green, and Zovni

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Related Sites +

  • CMI Walkthrough
    A walkthrough of The Curse of Monkey Island by Cindy Wells, which provides direction through both the regular and MegaMonkey modes of the game.
  • Escape from Monkey Island
    A website with lots of stuff about Monkey Island.
  • Hints for Curse of Monkey Island
    These hints are written so you can gradually get the help you need without spoiling the game for you.
  • LucasFans
    The unofficial LucasArts fan website.
  • ScummVM
    Get "Curse of Monkey Island", as well as many other adventure games, to run on modern systems by using ScummVM, a legal and free program.
  • The Curse of Monkey Island
    Official Website
  • The Scumm Bar
    A really good unofficial Monkey Island fan-club with lots of fan art, music and info about the game.
  • World Of Monkey Island
    An excellent fan-club with lots of things to look at such as errors in the game, screen shots, and more.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 547
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by robotriot.

Macintosh added by Stelios Kanitsakis.

Additional contributors: MAT, Swordmaster, Itay Brenner, Adam Baratz, Unicorn Lynx, Indra was here, Jeanne, Apogee IV, James Isaac, chirinea, Sciere, MDMaster, Zeppin, Paulus18950, federicocrane, Mastran, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack.

Game added December 7, 1999. Last modified March 6, 2024.